Island sex case lawyers in row over joke breasts

The magistrate and prosecutors involved in a sex abuse hearing on Pitcairn, the Bounty mutineers' Pacific outpost, were under attack yesterday after being photographed in comedy wigs and fake breasts.

The two men and a woman had sailed to the British possession to lay charges against nine residents of the island, which has a population of only 45. The accused face a variety of charges of rape and indecent assault against teenage girls.

Simon Moore, a Crown prosecutor, Christine Gordon, his assistant, and Gray Cameron, a barrister who acted as magistrate during the hearing, were on their way back to New Zealand by boat a few days later. Mr Moore said the group were relaxing before dinner on a chartered motor vessel lying off the Gambier archipelago.

"One of the crew went below and returned later wearing a red wig and plastic breasts. In the spirit of the moment, Magistrate Cameron, Ms Gordon and I put on the wig and plastic breasts. It was a couple of minutes of light-heartedness in the middle of the ocean."